Woman in Bronze

Tomas Stumbras grew up in war-torn Eastern Europe: a dark, rainy land of misty hills and valleys, where the whispers of the ancient gods and devils are still heard by ordinary people. He is a god-maker, a sculptor with a gift for turning dead wood into protective saints for use in prayer. But it's 1917 and even remote Lithuania feels the transforming effects of World War I. Caught between the destruction around him and his own drive to create, Tomas must abandon the stability of home and family and strike out on his own.

Tomas moves from his thatched wooden farmhouse to the vibrant streets and artistic community of Paris in the Roaring Twenties, where temptation and jealous are right around the corner from brilliance, beauty and fame. Working as a carpenter in the Folies Bergere, he encounters the dance sensation Josephine Baker and falls for a lovely chorus girl. But even when he finally achieves his dream and becomes an artist, he discovers that success demands sacrifice. Even when you find art and love, infamy and betrayal aren't far behind.

Epic in scope and beautifully evocative of time and place, Woman in Bronze reveals a life lived in extremes. It tells a story of love found and lost, creative endeavour and the price of celebrity and stardom.

Excerpt from Woman in BronzeEasterners flooded into Paris, and it hummed with Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Romanian, and many other languages among the porters and labourers. Tomas also saw many English and Americans, always rich, usually laughing, and often drunk. Waves were washing over the city from all ends of the world, churning into a froth in which even a talented person could drown.

From the Hardcover edition.

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The Battle of art is very much like war. All fame goes to the leaders, while the rank and file share the reward of a few lines in the order of the day; and the soldiers who die in the field are buried where they lie – one epitaph must do duty for a score of thousands.–Henri Murger, The Latin Quarter...

“The novel, written in a deceptively easy prose, is superbly told, and Sileika is a keen dramatist.”—The Globe and Mail

“Fuses rich storytelling with a palate of mixed historical and fictional characters that results in a book dripping in both its sights and sounds as well as the intricacies between the character’s relationships. Antanas Sileika carves a superb tale of one man’s drive through continuous obstacles of heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs, taking the reader along for the memorable ride.”—Calgary Herald

“A jazz-age La Bohème with a plot featuring the usual operatic subjects: illicit passions, jealous rages, tumultuous crowd scenes, tormented artists, dramatic reversals of fortune and lots of dead bodies. The lights, the promise, the debauchery and the virile young talent so essential to Paris in the ’20s are all on display…. Its evocation of a bygone era, the story’s tragic sweep, and the kind of high romanticism that sees the hero turn away from his moment of triumph — have a grandiosity and pathos any verismo composer would love.”—The Vancouver Sun

"What makes one artist rise to the top and not another? Antanas Sileika has written a tender, clear-eyed fable about the unknown artist in each of us."—Susan Swan